


You're as sickly sour as pomegranate juice

by Baryshnikov



Series: Spoiled Fruit [5]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Study, Dom/sub Undertones, Drinking, Hair-pulling, M/M, Power Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-16
Updated: 2019-11-16
Packaged: 2021-01-31 15:15:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21448291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baryshnikov/pseuds/Baryshnikov
Summary: Sometimes Tom just needed to relax.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle
Series: Spoiled Fruit [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1616770
Comments: 3
Kudos: 151





	You're as sickly sour as pomegranate juice

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little practice piece for something else I'm working on, so it's probably a little disconnected and underdeveloped; sorry about that.

Tom wasn’t drunk yet, but he was beginning to be. Harry could tell by the sharpness of his eyes and the soft roll of his shoulders as he spread himself further over the seat, limbs spilling over the sides entirely _indecently_. This was the only time, that Harry knew of, where Tom allowed himself to relax; where the tight metal wires that held him together loosened just enough to start unravelling.

If Harry had his way, be the one pulling him apart.

Splitting Tom open, like a child splitting rocks on the beach in the hope of finding fossils. 

Tom would let him too because he wanted this, he _needed_ this. After hours of dealing with ineptitude or, sometimes, simply sheer stupidity, Tom was content to let someone else take over it all; someone _proficient_ in the matters of his pleasure to take the reins, just so he didn’t have to think anymore. 

But for now, they were still sitting apart; separate chairs on separate sides of the coffee table. Tom holding his glass of wine; it glimmered in the light, colouring everything in a film of red, and Harry found his hands gripping at the polyester covering of the chair, quite without meaning to. It was scratchy on his palms, but, at least, this way he didn’t fidget.

He just watched.

They had neglected to turn the radio on and now the silence was a third presence sitting beside them, smothering them slowly. Depriving Harry of all the oxygen he wanted just to breathe, to keep his lungs inflating and deflating as they should. The silence did not afford Tom the same inconvenience.

If anything, it appeared to amuse him, like a new lover whispering nothing into his ear. He shifted again, though ‘shift’ failed to convey the elegance with which he did it. It was more of a glide; fingers stretching out before closing around the stem of his glass and raising it to his mouth. Tom took his time to swallow, savouring the flavour that Harry had never found particularly appetising.

But that didn’t matter, not when he had an appetite for other… indulgences. 

Tom just licked his lips, and Harry suspected, despite the apparent casualness of it all, that Tom knew _exactly_ what he looked like. There was too much of a mathematical precision to the angles of his neck and the spread of his thighs; just enough to be provocative without being sloppy. So too was there a deliberateness in the poise of his hands, and the grip of his fingers around the now empty wineglass.

And he looked _so_ good. Harry would be the first to admit that if he were to sit in such a way; negligent, with his back moulded to the slant of the chair and his legs spread apart and his head tilted back, well, he would look careless, incompetent even, and certainly…

Certainly…

Not distinguished. 

Harry passed his eyes over Tom again. Taking his time to examine every shape, every delineation and every contour that was exposed for him. There were so many. Tom was all tight corners and slick lines that Harry wanted to cut his teeth on; but, then again, _everyone_ wanted to do less than innocent things with Tom. 

_To_ Tom.

He was irresistible like that. Desirable was written into his smile, and charming stained his tongue. And as if that wasn’t enough, charisma curled itself, like poison ivy, all over his personality, and temptation was infused right into his skin, probably down to the bone. 

It was hard not to touch him. 

Especially today. For today, everything about Tom was amplified by what he was wearing. It wasn’t that it was inappropriate, quite the opposite; but as Harry stared uninhibited at him, he couldn’t help the dryness of his throat, and the itchiness of his palms. All Tom had done was undo the topmost buttons of his shirt. 

That was all. 

And yet, the results were…

_Unbearable._

The buttons at the collar had been undone as soon as Tom got home from work, but by now they’d been joined by two more, and Harry couldn’t keep his eyes off the sliver of skin dipped in shadows. That darkness accentuated the sharpness of Tom’s collarbones; drenching the hollows in the shadows tinged red by the lights.

Harry wanted to touch them.

He wanted to touch Tom. 

To feel him beneath his hands, to curl his fingers around Tom’s wrists, and have them span the space to his waist. A little part of Harry wanted to press Tom into the chair, mould him; position him in just the way that he wanted in order to take him apart little by little; let him relax.

But Harry didn’t.

Instead, he stayed, sitting across the room, his legs pressed uncomfortably together, and his lip caught between his teeth. Part of him knew he was biting it a little hard, enough that the skin was starting to break, and the faint metallic tinge of blood was beginning spread across his tongue. 

But he couldn’t.

Not without Tom’s permission.

How exactly their arrangement had come about, Harry couldn’t remember; only that, Tom had always had a predilection for the illusion of control, and Harry had found himself enamoured with the glaze that coated Tom’s eyes whenever he got a power rush. So, Harry sat there. Squeezing all his muscles until they ached and crushing his lip between his teeth until he could actually feel the warm trickle of blood. Just waiting for the moment that Tom would let him come close, let him touch what was his and _his_ alone. 

It wasn’t long before Tom’s gaze turned towards him. 

His head was to the side and he was watching with interest, though what he was interested in Harry couldn’t quite tell. He could never tell what Tom was thinking; and perhaps that should have worried him, Tom’s unnerving ability to hide everything about himself behind a diamond smile. But it didn’t bother Harry as much as it should have done. He was too distracted with the warmth tangling its way up through him, like a termite burrowing through wood, it ate away at him until it was no longer just a warmth, but a burning heat. 

An inextinguishable scorching like hot coals had been formed in his stomach, and his blood had turned into bubbling magma, and still, Tom smiled with all the artificial coolness in the world, rather like glass as it comes so close to cracking. 

And still, it was silent. At least, until it wasn’t. Until Tom tapped at his thigh gently, the patter of his fingers as loud as any reverberates of thunder could ever be.

Harry swallowed. 

After all, he knew what Tom wanted. How could he not? He knew Tom inside out, from each, and every, mark on his skin, to the slow pulsating of his insides. There was no part of Tom that was not intimately recorded inside Harry’s head; he had memory after memory swimming through his synapses. 

So, Harry licked his lips and pushed himself up from the chair, taking small, nervous steps across the room. His feet sinking into the carpet, smothering up the sound; in that moment, when there was nothing but him and Tom and the suppressed sound of his feet, Harry couldn’t help but think of this as a pilgrimage.

A sacrosanct walk towards his destiny. 

He stopped in front of Tom and stood there, in the space between his knees. This wasn’t the first time, but Harry still found himself pulling at the worn sleeves of the jumper he refused to throw away. He couldn’t help it, for to be near Tom was to be on the edge of suffocation.

It was to have his aura bearing down your throat and bleeding into your lungs as an infection does. 

When their eyes met, Harry found himself swallowing again. This close up, Tom was painful to look at; eyes like a black hole, sucking in everything around him until there was nothing but silence and stillness, and yet, a sparking remained in the very back of his eyes, like there was an electrical fire somewhere in the deepest depths of Tom’s irises. 

Beguiling, simply beguiling. 

Back before he’d met Tom, Harry had never thought that someone could be so beautiful that they were grotesque. But that was the only way to describe someone as surreal as Tom. For, despite the sparks in his eyes, there was nothing inside him. Just a void; this great expanse of emptiness that spread out from where a soul should be. 

Like a flower without pollen.

Or a pomegranate, rotten on the inside.

But Tom didn’t care.

That was what was so intoxicating about him. He really didn’t care if there was nothing behind his eyes, if there was nothing inside him at all. And it was that confidence that had Harry coming back again and again and again, just to stand between Tom’s thighs and drink in his presences as though it were manna. 

“Won’t you kneel for me, Harry?” he murmured, that hand still pressed against his thigh. “I like it when you kneel.”

Whilst it might have been framed as a question, it most certainly wasn’t one. Tom’s tone made that clear enough; there was an insistence curled through each and every word, wrapping around it like the tentacles of a squid might wrap around a fish, or the tongue of a predator might wrap around its prey.

Tom wanted this, and Harry would let him have it. 

And it was worth it, for as soon as he was down on his knees, Tom’s hand scooped into his hair, smoothing the curls between his fingers how you might pet a dog, but Harry still leaned into his touch. Forever faithful. For if this is what Tom wanted, then this is what Tom would get, because who was Harry to deny him what he wanted?

“You look lovely,” Tom murmured again, interrupting his thoughts as his nails soothed over Harry’s scalp and down behind his ear. The slink of Tom’s fingers made him shiver like a silver string was being pulled up his spine. “_Really_ lovely,” Tom continued, his fingers now rounding over Harry’s jaw and right under his chin. With the pad of his thumb, he pressed upward, and Harry inclined his face towards Tom’s, as a flower does towards the sun.

From anyone else, such a compliment would be a simple said and done affair; greeted with a smile, but Harry knew he was flushing an unflattering shade of pink, that it was spilling down his neck like an unruly river burst its banks. 

They stayed like that for minute after minute. Second after second ticking past on Tom’s watch, resounding out in the silence, practically echoing off the walls and the furniture and back inside Harry’s head.

Neither of them moved. 

Whilst it might appear, to the casual observer, that Tom held _all_ the power, Harry was satisfied with the sliver of knowledge that, when Tom was like this, he had the exclusive ability to turn him into mush, if he so wanted. Tom might control the floodgates, but once they were opened, he had very little control over what happened next.

And what happened next was usually the best part. 

Ever so slowly, Harry began to shift closer to Tom. His hand starting to touch at Tom’s knee, scrabbling like a puppy might at its master’s heel. But Tom didn’t reprimand him. Rather, as Harry’s hand grew bolder and pressed higher, Tom’s smile spread wider and he groaned softly, letting his head fall against the back of the chair, his grip on Harry’s hair loosening. 

“You know what I like,” he said, the syllables catching on the tip of his tongue like wool on barbed wire. And Harry knew it was the only indication he was going to get that Tom was enjoying this. “_But_,” he continued, his eyes opening slowly, “I didn’t say you could now, did I?”

The words were so simple, and yet they were everything that Harry feared. Well, not, feared, because it wasn’t fear, because to feel fear, you have to be scared, and Harry wasn’t scared. Tom didn’t hurt the things he adored, and he _adored_ Harry more than anything in the world. More…

More…

_Nervous._

And rightly so, because before Harry could move out of range, Tom got his hand back into his hair and pulled it hard, forcing Harry’s cheek to rest against the inner seam that ran the full length of his thigh. “What do you say, Harry?” he murmured, clearly not interested in indulging some of his more _sadistic_ fantasies tonight

Harry tried to swallow, to concentrate on Tom’s words, but it was hard when Tom himself was so warm, and the material of his slacks was so smooth on his cheek, and he could just lie here, forever.

“Do I have to ask again?” Tom said, interrupting Harry’s happy little fantasy. There was a time and a place for that, and it wasn’t here and it wasn’t now; that much was obvious by the coldness that infected every other consonant and made them as bitter as the coffee Tom liked to drink just to wake up after nights like this one.

“Please,” Harry said, the word coming out slightly strange as half his mouth was smushed against Tom’s thigh. He could feel his skin pressed against his teeth, probably leaving behind an imprint on the inside of his mouth. That place that no one but Tom would ever see. 

“Please, _what_, Harry?”

Harry swallowed, it didn’t seem to matter how many times they did this; how many times Tom asked different iterations of that same question, he still blushed like a turn-of-the-century bride on her wedding night. 

“I... I want to… touch you,” he stuttered, and it was true. He wanted to touch Tom, he _always_ had, and he always would. There was just something embedded in Tom’s skin that made him so _touchable_, as though, if Harry searched hard enough, he’d find buried treasure between Tom’s bones.

Though, right now, Tom’s hand was still pulling hard enough to make Harry wince. It was a gravity of sorts, a substance that reminded him of what Tom could do if he wanted, that it was by mere affection alone that he hadn’t been systemically taken apart and thrown away as soon as Tom was bored. 

Once again, Tom interrupted those thoughts. “Where do you want to touch me?” he said softly; the thumb that was in Harry’s hair, starting to stroke equally soft little circles. 

But Harry stayed silent, not because he didn’t know, but simply because there so many places, so many reasons, so many explanations that they caught up, jumbled on his tongue until his mouth was so full of words, he could hardly speak. Well, that, _and_ he always liked to make Tom guess a little. This was a two-player game after all. 

“Okay,” said Tom wetting his lips, “we’ll do it your way.” Without breaking eye contact, Tom swallowed, and raised his left hand, “do you want to touch me here?” he murmured, his fingers upstretched towards his neck; brushing over the skin and the muscles and the arteries, before coming to rest on the pulse point. Even from here, Harry could feel the weight of those fingers; how they’d be pushing into the skin, feeling the thud of life just below the surface. 

He nodded.

“What about here?” Tom said, those deceitful fingers crawling up along his throat, before coming to rest against his bottom lip, tracing his mouth with his nails in the same way that Harry had done last week.

Harry nodded. 

Tom smiled. 

This was a simple game. 

“How about here?” Tom said, this time his hand dropping down and parting his shirt wider, stretching the space just so Harry could see how he drew his fingers over his own collarbones. Such gentle touches along the ridge as though the slightest pressure might shatter them. 

Harry nodded again; his brain entirely incapable of making words anymore. 

Still watching him, looking right into his eyes, Tom unhooked his fingers from his shirt and began to trail them downward. Harry did try to keep his eyes on Tom’s but in his periphery was that hand, those fingers, sprawling over his ribs like a climbing rose across a trellis. Tom’s hand only stopped against the buckle of his belt, pausing for long enough that a whole host of ideas passed through Harry’s head. Just shadow tinged fantasies of what he’d like Tom to do to him, and what he wanted to do to Tom. 

As if Tom was reading his thoughts, he smiled, and dipped his hand lower, until the palm pressed against his groin; he exhaled slowly. There was a stickiness to his mouth and the unmistakable candyfloss flush of arousal, spread over his skin as thick as buttercream icing. Slowly Tom opened his eyes, still as dark and awake as ever.

“Do you want to touch me here, Harry?” 

He nodded again. His head barely moving, lest he upset the balance of the air, that lovely calm silence that he could feel bearing down on the back of his neck like the sun’s rays beating through a morning fog.

He’d never wanted to touch Tom so _badly_ before.

But still, Tom just tilted his head to the side, a slight crease forming as he did so. “I can’t hear you, Harry,” he said softly, the sound of his voice at once harmonising the static of the silence, and cutting it open like a carcass for butchering, “and you know how much I like to hear you.” 

“Yes,” Harry choked out, “yes – I want to – to touch you – and taste you and – and _impress_ you.” Harry had hardly expected _those_ words; they were true of course, and he’d thought them every single time he’d been down on his knees. But he’d never said them _aloud_ before. 

Harry swallowed, still unable to resist wondering whether this would all be _enough_. Sometimes it was, other times it wasn’t. There were nights, similar to this where he stayed on the floor until he physically couldn’t take it anymore, and Tom had had to slowly string him back together like bunting after it's been left out in the rain.

But tonight, Tom just smiled and released his grip on Harry’s hair. “Go on then,” he murmured, spreading his legs wider, “impress me.”


End file.
